This study investigates the importance of social norms for shaping women's and men's decision to participate in the stock market, aiming to disentangle the different channels playing a role in this decision. Gender role asymmetry is indicated by the country's rank in the gender equality index of the World Economic Forum. Using data from four national household surveys, we find that in Italy – the country with highly asymmetric gender role prescriptions – women's risk-taking behavior responds to this non-supportive environment. Consistent with the theory of social identity, Italian women refrain from stock market participation more than their self-reported risk tolerance levels would suggest. In contrast, in the three countries with a lower asymmetry in gender role prescriptions, no exaggerated female backing off from investing in stocks is observable. The result is robust to separately analyzing sub-samples of singles and couples. However, women who self-select into stock market participation invest the same portfolio share in stocks as do their male peers – independent of the society's degree of gender role divergence. 

This study analyses how liquidity risk affects bonds’ yield spreads after controlling for credit risk, bond-specific characteristics and macroeconomic variables. Using two liquidity estimates, LOT liquidity and the bid-ask spread, we find that, in particular, the LOT liquidity measure has explanatory power for the yield spread of green bonds. Overall, however, the impact of LOT decreases over time, implying that, nowadays liquidity risk is negligible for green bonds.

This paper sheds new light on how African countries’ legal systems and institutions influence the governance and stability of their banks. We find that institutional factors, in particular the legal family of origin, political stability, contract enforcement and strength of investor protection promote central corporate governance reforms. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we also reveal that those reforms mediate the impact of institutions on banks. If countries have a corporate governance reform in place their banks show better internal governance and higher stability.

This study analyses how liquidity risk affects bonds’ yield spreads after controlling for credit risk, bond-specific characteristics and macroeconomic variables. Using two liquidity estimates, LOT liquidity and the bid-ask spread, we find that, in particular, the LOT liquidity measure has explanatory power for the yield spread of green bonds. Overall, however, the impact of LOT decreases over time, implying that, nowadays liquidity risk is negligible for green bonds.

Using the Mannheim innovation panel, we investigate whether family firms have higher financial need and how this affects both innovation input and innovation outcomes such as firm or market novelties, or process innovation. Applying the CDM framework, we find that family firms are more likely to have a latent financial need for innovation, which means that they have innovation ideas which they have not implemented yet. We find that family firms have a significantly lower marginal innovation productivity in particular for innovations with radical character, i.e., market novelties. We conclude from this evidence that family firms have a comparative disadvantage in innovation projects that imply high risk and require high innovation capability.

This study examines the actual funding behavior of German innovative firms in the pre- and post-crisis period. Specifically, we investigate if and how the funding patterns and financial constraints of German small and medium enterprises (SME) changed during and since the financial crisis. The purpose of our analysis is to assess whether the aims of the European CMU action plan, funding innovation and investment activities, complements the behavior of German SMEs. We find fairly stable funding patterns over the years and there is no indication that financial constraints have become tighter in the post-crisis period. Consequently, realizing the CMU?s central goal of broadening the funding mix could leave the funding behavior of German SMEs largely unaffected. 

Diese Studie untersucht das aktuelle Finanzierungsverhalten deutscher innovativer Unternehmen vor und nach der Finanzkrise. Speziell untersuchen wir, ob sich die Finanzierungsstruktur und finanzielle Restriktionen der deutschen kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU) seit der Finanzkrise verändert haben. Der Zweck unserer Analyse ist es, zu beurteilen, ob die Ziele des europäischen CMU-Aktionsplans, insbesondere das Ziel der Förderung von Innovations- und Investitionstätigkeit, die Finanzierungssituation von deutschen KMU tatsächlich verbessern kann. Wir finden über den Untersuchungszeitraum hinweg stabile Finanzierungsstrukturen, und wir finden keine Evidenz, dass finanzielle Restriktionen nach der Krise zugenommen hätten. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird der CMU-Aktionsplan mit der Zielsetzung, den Finanzierungsmix von KMU zu erweitern, das aktuelle Finanzierungsverhalten deutscher KMU kaum beeinflussen.

We examine whether monetary transmission during the financial and sovereign debt crisis was dominated by the cost channel or by the demand-side channel effect. We use two approaches to track down the potential pass-through of changes in the monetary policy rate to those in consumer prices. First, we utilize panel data from the German manufacturing industry. Second, we conduct time series analyses for Germany, Italy, and Spain. We find that when manufacturing firms’ interest costs drop, the changes in their respective industry’s price index are smaller one year later. This finding is consistent with the cost channel theory. Taken together, the results of both panel data and time series analyses imply that the ECB’s low interest rate policy has worked better for boosting inflation in Italy and Spain than in Germany.

This paper studies the reaction of the Euro's value againstmajor currencies to sovereign rating announcements from Moody's, S&P and Fitch CRAs during the Eurozone debt crisis in 2010--2012 based on eventstudy methodology combined with GARCH models. We also analyze how theyields of French, Italian, German and Spanish government long-term bondswere affected by CRA announcements. Our results reveal that CRA downgrades, watchlist and outlook announcements had no impact on the value of the Euro currency but increased exchange rate volatility. At the same time, downgrades as well as negative outlook announcements increased the yields of French, Italian, and Spanish bonds and evenaffected the German bond's yields. This shows that the monetary union hasled to a breakdown of the consequences of the rating shocks between currency value and sovereign bond yields. The reason is that part of the rating shock is absorbed by an internal repricing of sovereign bonds.

The study aims to assess the distributional effects of taxing financial transactions including a focus on gender. It specifically investigates the impact of the low interest rate environment on tax revenues and distribution. The first part of the study is explorative, aiming to develop a concept for the assessment. This is because the role of low or even negative interest rates is not yet specifically considered in the context of FTT. In the second part, the challenge is to find appropriate data for European countries in order to assess distributional effects. The study also highlights the existing data gaps that prevent a long-term evaluation of FTT with regard to tax revenues, impact, and distributional consequences.